Six games into the new campaign, Viktor Gyökeres' second season at Arsenal looks nothing like his first. Last year he finished as our club's top scorer across all competitions with 21 goals, edging out records held by the likes of Thierry Henry along the way. This year, in the Premier League alone, he has featured for a grand total of 12 minutes, has no goals and no assists, and has started only one match all season — the Champions League opener in Naples.
Gyökeres was an unused substitute for the wins over Coventry City and Aston Villa, both games the transfer window was still open. His first involvement of the season came as a 78th-minute substitute in the 2-1 win over Chelsea, a cameo brief enough to draw a memorably brutal comparison from former striker Troy Deeney, who likened his touch on the ball to "a horse trying to control a ball."
He did get a rare start against Napoli in the Champions League, with Arteta rotating his forward line, but the outing did little to change the narrative — stats from the game noted he managed only around nine touches across his time on the pitch as we dominated possession elsewhere. He was an unused substitute again for the away trip to Sunderland.
Put simply: the club's headline signing from last summer, a £64m-plus striker who plundered 68 goals in two seasons at Sporting CP before that, currently sits fourth in the pecking order behind Kai Havertz, who has started every league game up front and has been directly involved in Arsenal's last two winning goals.
Some of Viktor Gyökeres' finest strikes in a Sporting shirt over the past two seasons. 🇸🇪🔥
— Footybuzz (@footybuzzHQ) July 6, 2025
A highlight reel worth watching on repeat. pic.twitter.com/Bdopxb63MJ
The most obvious explanation is simply form and fit. Havertz has begun this season superbly, and pundits like Jamie Carragher have been blunt in their assessment that Gyökeres is unlikely to displace him while he continues to perform at this level. Arteta's system currently seems to suit a more mobile, link-up forward over an out-and-out target man profile, and results have done nothing to force a change.
But there's a second, murkier layer to the story. Broadcaster Piers Morgan claimed on Sports Uncensored to have been told, on good authority, that Gyökeres has been "deliberately benched" and feels disrespected by Arteta — with the suggestion being that the club used his lack of game time over the summer to try to engineer a sale. That claim lines up with reporting from earlier in the window: Arsenal were said to have explored a deal that would have sent Gyökeres to Atlético Madrid, potentially as makeweight in a swap for Julián Álvarez. That deal collapsed when Álvarez made clear his preference was a move to Barcelona instead.
With that Álvarez route closed off, at least for now, attention has turned to January. Multiple reports in the past week have linked Gyökeres with a mid-season move away from the Emirates, most strikingly a possible swap deal with an Al-Ahli or Al-Hilal in the Saudi Pro League, with England international Ivan Toney mentioned as a possible makeweight coming the other way. Transfer insider Fraser Fletcher has previously suggested we are prepared to sell Gyökeres in January but only under the right circumstances, while other reports frame the club as still assessing whether he simply needs regular football to rediscover his best form.
Not everyone agrees a January exit is imminent, though. Journalist Ben Jacobs has been the most consistent voice pushing back on the exit narrative, saying on the Market Madness podcast that he understands Gyökeres will see out the season at Arsenal and that nothing is happening behind the scenes to force him out this winter. Jacobs has also noted that even if the club were open to a sale in principle, Arteta has publicly said the manager remains fully invested in the player — a stance Jacobs suggests managers tend to take regardless of what happens internally.
What Happens Next
The uncomfortable truth for Gyökeres is that none of this is really in his hands right now. Whatever the truth behind the "deliberately benched" claims, the on-pitch reality is that Havertz is playing well enough that Arteta has no obvious incentive to change things, and every week that continues only adds fuel to speculation about a January departure. A run of fixtures with squad rotation — whether through fatigue, injuries, or cup competitions — may be his best remaining chance this autumn to force his way back into contention before the winter window reopens the conversation in earnest.
For now, our title defence and Champions League campaign are both purring along nicely without him. Whether that's a damning verdict on Gyökeres, a triumph of Arteta's man-management and squad depth, or simply an early-season storyline that resolves itself the moment Havertz has an off day, is the question that will keep being asked until one side of it gives way.
COYG.
